Portrait of Rupert (1619-1682), Prince-Palatine of the Rhine, in Combat Dress, Anthony van Dyck (copy after), after c. 1645 – (Anthony Van Dyck) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Anthony Van Dyck

Date: 1645

Size: 128 x 102 cm

Technique: Oil On Canvas

The sitter in this portrait wears combat dress: a buff surcoat over a slashed mulberry-coloured tunic trimmed with gold lace, pointed with lace collar and cuffs. A baldric supports a sword at his side, round his neck and shoulders is a gorget; his breeches are also mulberry-coloured and trimmed with gold lace. The warrior can be safely identified as Rupert (1619-1682), Prince and Count Palatine of the Rhine and later Duke of Cumberland, by virtue of the similarity of his features with those in Anthony van Dyck’s full-length portrait at Baltimore.10 He was the second surviving son of Frederick V (1596-1632), the Elector Palatine, and Princess Elizabeth (1596-1662), the daughter of King James I of Great Britain. The prince was brought up in the Dutch Republic; following the death of his father, he joined his dispossessed elder brother in London in early February 1636 and left the country in mid-1637 to join the siege of Breda.11 It is at this juncture that he would have sat to Van Dyck, as he remained on the continent until the end of 1641. Van Dyck portrayed him at least four times: in the full length at Baltimore already referred to, wearing black costume; in armour with his elder brother at three-quarter length (Paris, Musée du Louvre);12 and at half length in military uniform his baton help up, known only by an engraving.13 The present portrait is one of three versions, perhaps after a lost original or a lost studio variant of the full-length at Baltimore. The other two are in the National Gallery, London,14 and the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin;15 they all differ in some respects from each other. The Dublin picture is a full-length and thought to be an early copy; it was owned by Philip Wharton (1613-1690), 4th Baron Wharton, who possessed an important group of paintings by Van Dyck, as well as having sat twice to the artist.16 The London painting is optimistically described as the work of the studio, this in spite of its possible provenance from William Craven (1608-1697), 1st Earl of Craven, an ardent adherent of the family of the dispossessed Elector Palatine.17 The date of the Rijksmuseum portrait is not certain, but it seems to be early and perhaps 1645 or later. The portrait perhaps came to the attention of the museum when it was exhibited in the Michiel de Ruyter exhibition (no. 154) at the museum in 1957, shortly before being sent to auction. Following its acquisition, it was attributed to the English artist William Dobson (1611-1646), who depicted the prince on three occasions in the 1640s, when Prince Rupert was in Oxford supporting his uncle, King Charles, now at war with Parliament.18 This attribution was challenged by Frewer in 1965 and again by Millar in 1977.19 By then the attribution had been qualified; it was abandoned in the 1992 museum catalogue. Prince Rupert was a charismatic, royalist cavalry commander in the English Civil War; after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he was a successful admiral. Edward Montagu (1625-1672), 1st Earl of Sandwich, in his early career a Roundhead and supporter of Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, whose descendants were to own this portrait, was in the opposing army in several of the Civil War battles, and escorted the prince to Oxford after his surrender of the city of Bristol to the Parliamentarians. The pair, however, later enjoyed cordial, professional relations as admirals in the English navy.20 Gregory Martin, 2022